Sometimes the best tips are not so much answers as questions. I read a great one this week:
“If you were doomed to live the same life over and over again for eternity, would you choose the life you are living now?”
Would you? If so, keep doing what you’re doing.
If not, what are you doing to change that?
I think most of us would want to relive some things but rather not relive others… but that wasn’t one of the options.
The point is this: However you feel about the life you’ve lived thus far, you can start TODAY to create a life worth reliving… a relationship worth reliving, a career worth reliving, a quality of life worth reliving.
How? Start. Take action. If you don’t know what or how, ask. Get started!
Toward the climax of my “What If? Keynote Experience” I remind audiences, “Most of us know exact what we need to do, we just don’t do it.”
What is it you know you need to do but just haven’t? What dream has lain dormant? And, uh, when exactly were you going to act on that? Someday?
“No one says, ‘I’m never going to write my symphony.’ They say, ‘I’ll write it tomorrow.’” -Steven Pressfield
Steven Pressfield wrote a book that changed my life: “The War of Art,” which I HIGHLY recommend. (Not “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu).
In it, Pressfield names the thing that keeps us from taking action: Resistance. With a capital “R.” He equates Resistance to nothing less than Satan.
Resistance is the excuses, the rationalizing, the fears… anything that keeps us from doing what we love, what we need to… creating a life worth reliving.
Do you have a dream you haven’t lived, a goal you haven’t started, a vision of the person you aren’t yet, are you a writer who doesn’t write, a painter who doesn’t paint, an entrepreneur who never starts a venture? If so, you know exactly what Resistance is.
While there are many sides to this subject I have one great suggestion for how to beat Resistance:
Book it.
Whatever that thing is you need to do, right now choose a time to do it, ASAP, put it on your calendar and do it! Don’t change it. I mean, if you book a doctor appointment, if you have a meeting with your boss, you show up, right?
Treat this with the same level of importance, because it is!
Show up and start whatever it is… writing, designing your business, developing the skill, creating your ministry, taking action on your dream. And don’t try to be perfect. Just create.
“You worry about the quantity, let God worry about the quality.” –Julia Cameron
Then book it again. And show up again.
I see a world of people living less than the life they want. Whatever else is the answer, taking action is the only way you’ll create a life worth reliving. Start right now.
Please comment! Like it if you like it.
Live Truly, Truly Live,
Mike
PS Just to plant a seed, in January 2017 I will host my second live event: “The What IF Experience!” It’s your chance to become discover and develop your creativity, become a possibility thinker. If you loved my “What IF?” Keynote and want to go deeper this is it. We will flesh out the three tools… 1. Ask What If, 2. Write Music You Can’t Play, Become a Virtuoso. We will learn the tools of creativity, mind-storming, brainstorming, storyboarding, creative problem solving, how to find possibilities in the impossible, both individual and group creative activities. I’m still ironing out details but I’ve been preparing for this for years, perfecting the materials.
